THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTHS
Geo.Washington
BY HOWARD LAFAY
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHS by TED SPIEGEL
BLACK STAR
ARELY HAS HISTORY so obscured
a hero. The adulation of his con
temporaries-"Had he lived in the
days of idolatry, he had been wor
shipped as a god"-drowned his
achievements in saccharin. Generations of
schoolchildren have nodded over fictitious
accounts of his relentlessly righteous life.
For too many, the name George Washington
evokes the image of a stony-faced old man,
an untroubled Olympian prig.
All of it false. Washington, all too human,
knew ambition and greed and disappoint
ment... grief and frustration... the pangs of
unrequited love. In each of his triumphs pain
preceded glory. The soldier who won inde
pendence for his country capped his first
campaign with an ignominious surrender.
The future President of the United States was
soundly defeated in 1755, when he first sought
elective office in Virginia. Washington doted
on children. Yet-to his profound sadness-
he who won the title Father of his Country
sired no progeny of his own.
He hungered for love and, as a young man,
offered his heart to a neighboring lady of
high degree, Sally Fairfax. No evidence exists,
however, that she reciprocated. He hungered
also for property, but was bluntly rejected by
at least one of the landed ladies of Virginia he
courted before he met and wooed the wealthy
widow Martha Dandridge Custis.
When he finally married Martha in 1759,
he became a faithful and affectionate hus
band; but not long before his wedding, he
wrote what can only be termed a "love letter"
to Sally Fairfax. And after the turbulence of
the Revolution and the Presidency, he sent a
bittersweet note to that same lady-who, with
her husband, had removed to Britain in 1773
-telling her that not all his honors "have
been able to eradicate from my mind ... those
happy moments, the happiest in my life,
which I have enjoyed in your company."
Like all Americans, George Washington
came of immigrant stock. His great-grand
father John Washington stepped ashore in
Virginia in 1657. Land was plentiful, and
John Washington soon acquired both wealth
and influence. By the time he died, he pre
sided over an estate of 10,000 acres.
His great-grandson George was born in
1732. In an age of primogeniture, the baby's
future loomed unpromisingly; he was a third
son, born of a second wife. Of his early years
we know only that his schooling was spotty
so much so that he ranks among the least
educated of all United States Presidents.
Trained as a surveyor, the youth at age 16
journeyed to the Shenandoah Valley, on
All but deified by his admirers, our first President was in fact a many-faceted human,
bedeviled like all men by pride, doubt, and ambition. But by the eve of the Revolution he had
earned the reputation as "no harum Starum ranting Swearing fellow but Sober, steady, and
Calm." For these traits, fellow citizens selected him to lead their fight for independence and,
later, to lead the new nation itself.
1772 PORTRAIT
BYCHARLES
WILLSON
PEALE,COURTESY
WASHINGTON
ANDLEEUNIVERSITY